Is this really The Greatest Depression?

[mercuryrising]

Thanks schola, btw.

I had forgotten about this interest in economics.

[schola]

Mercury,

I'm aware of the evils of multinational corporations and I wouldn't want a system where corporations had infinite power to run rampant on this planet.

But I contend that without government interferrence, most monopolies wouldn't exist. Government and corporate interests act in collusion with eachother. At the top, there's really no difference between government and corporations. This became very obvious to me when I noticed the same people bouncing around from government positions to private industry and back and forth. Someone coined the phrase "the revolving door" to describe this phenomenon. This is beyond parties. Both democrats and republicans do it. For example, Bush's treasury secretary was the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Democrat Tom Daschle retired from the Senate and then made millions lobbying for the health industry. These are just two examples off the top of my head but there are many more.

On the subject of regulation: For multinational corporations, regulation is like the Brer Rabbit in the Briar Patch. Most multinationals need government regulation in order to preserve their monopoly because government regulation stifles competition. The free market does work: A company with a huge market share is still very vulnerable to new start ups with innovative ideas. Look at how Google has cut into Microsoft and Yahoo's profits in the past decade. Firefox is now as popular as Internet Explorer.

Government regulations, which cost businesses money to comply with, have the bad habit of forcing small businesses into bankruptcy while leaving the bigger corporations standing. The big corporation has to pay to comply as well, but the pros outweigh the cons. A few million dollars to comply with government regs is small potatoes when your bottom line is in billions and your competition just got forced out of business.

A good example of government and big business in collusion is agriculture. Small farmers are getting assaulted on all sides. Monsanto uses the court system to sue farmers who end up with Monsanto's GMO seeds in their fields, even though it's impossible to prevent the seeds from blowing in from a neighboring field.

In the 90's when organic food became a billion dollar industry, the big corporate factory farms wanted a piece of the action. But they couldn't comply with the stringent standards of the private non-profits who regulated the industry, like intensive confinement and use of GMOs. Then in 1998, the Federal Government got involved. They diluted the standards to a point that allowed massive corporate farms the ability to become certified organic. Then they increased the costs associated with getting certified so that many small organic growers were forced out.

The one area where I believe regulation is necessary is banking, which is an abomination. The money changers in this country should be hung from the street lamps.

[schola]

Here's a great article detailing how Monsanto uses the government to enforce it's monopoly:

The Multiple Ways Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach

Excerpt:

1. They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest.

2. They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork and testing and tracking every variety and being subject to fines, that having normal seed becomes almost impossible (an NAIS approach to wiping out normal seeds). Does your state have such a seed law? Before they existed, farmers just collected the seeds and put them in sacks in the shed and used them the next year, sharing whatever they wished with friends and neighbors, selling some if they wanted. That’s been killed.

In Illinois, which has such a seed law, Madigan, the Speaker of the House, his staff is Monsanto lobbyists.

3. Monsanto is pushing anti-democracy laws (Vilsack’s brainchild, actually) that remove community’ control over their own counties so farmers and citizens can’t block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops. So if you don’t want a GM-crop that grows industrial chemicals or drugs or a rice growing with human DNA in it, in your area and mixing with your crops, tough luck.

Check the map of just where the Monsanto/Vilsack laws are and see if your state is still a democracy or is Monsanto’s. A farmer in Illinois told me he heard that Bush had pushed through some regulation that made this true in every state. People need to check on that.

4. For sure there are Monsanto regulations buried in the FDA right now that make a farmer’s seed cleaning equipment illegal (another way to leave nothing but GM-seeds) because it’s now considered a “source of seed contamination.” Farmer can still seed clean but the equipment now has to be certified and a farmer said it would require a million to a million and half dollar building and equipment … for EACH line of seed. Seed storage facilities are also listed (another million?) and harvesting and transport equipment. And manure. Something that can contaminate seed. Notice that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not mentioned.

You could eat manure and be okay (a little grossed out but okay). Try that with pesticides and fertilizers. Indian farmers have. Their top choice for how to commit suicide to escape the debt they have been left in is to drink Monsanto pesticides.

5. Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners across the Midwest. In Pilot Grove, Missouri, in Indiana (Maurice Parr), and now in southern Illinois (Steve Hixon). And they are using US marshals and state troopers and county police to show up in three cars to serve the poor farmers who had used Hixon as their seed cleaner, telling them that he or their neighbors turned them in, so across that 6 county areas, no one talking to neighbors and people are living in fear and those farming communities are falling apart from the suspicion Monsanto sowed. Hixon’s office got broken into and he thinks someone put a GPS tracking device on his equipment and that’s how Monsanto found between 200-400 customers in very scattered and remote areas, and threatened them all and destroyed his business within 2 days.The Multiple Ways Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach « Surviving the Middle Class Crash
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